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Monday, January 25, 2010

The Ft Hood Report-Disgraceful

Togo West

With all due respect to Togo West's military service, his report on the Ft Hood massacre was a disservice, both to the American public and to the military.

West's report is a product of the same political correctness that led to the massacre in the first place. It says nothing about what caused the killings in the first place-Islamic Jihadist terrorism. One can only suspect that someone verrrry high up in the government told him what not to say in the report.

It seems that what West is recommending is more bureaucratic reporting requirements that would only make the situation worse.

Recommendation: "Develop a risk-assessment tool for commanders."

The problem in the military is that Major Hasan was kept in the Army and promoted instead of being kicked out because of political correctness. He was a Muslim-and a very militant and vocal one at that. Despite all the warning signs, the Army was afraid to take the necessary action because they knew that Hasan would yell racism and bring in CAIR to file lawsuits galore. It is clear that even those above Hasan, the colonels and the generals, were afraid of discrimination complaints and/or lawsuits. And you know what those things lead to in an officer's career? Bad fitness evaluations, loss of promotions and being forced to retire.

It reminds me of when I was a young military policeman in Germany. What did unit commanders fear more than anything? DRs. (delinquency reports). What that meant was that if soldiers from their units got driving citations or were picked up by the MP's and charged with some offense, that was a "DR" that was hung on that unit. Too many DRs were a negative reflection on commanders' efficiency reports.

Noted that I am talking about the Army in the 1960s, and I don't know what has changed. It seems to me, however, that Major Hasan posed a problem for the Army, and nobody wanted to do anything about it. Had Hasan been a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male with an attitude problem, that attitude would have been "adjusted" quickly and decisively.

Now comes Togo West' vanilla report that talks about this incident as if Pvt. Charles Mansen got drunk one night and shot up the post, and how can we prevent this from happening again? Well, you can't prevent it from happening if you refuse to acknowledge the threat and from where it is coming.

West's report has only highlighted and compounded the problem of political correctness that exists in our military. If it is not addressed and corrected quickly, we can only await the next attack.

17 comments:

I didn't look for very long, but do you have a link to the actual report?

Whereas I think it's dangerous to simplify the cause of this problem down to any one talking point - like "political correctness", I do agree with your overall thesis. If a devotion to fanatical Islam was part of the root cause of what made him do this, then we shouldn't pretend that it wasn't. And saying that doesn't mean that we can't also point to things like mental illness, but let's tell the complete truth and not just the things that further an agenda.

I don't know enough to say, but why is it so far out that it might be a combination of extremist terror and mental illness? Maybe it was a mental illness that made him gravitate towards such a deadly ideology - and if it wasn't the Jihadist Islam, it would have been something else.

Why must it be 100% one thing and 0% of another thing? Why are you so hesitant to even consider any kind of complex, nuanced answer? I don't know about you, but the people I know in life are pretty complicated in their motivations for pretty much everything they do.

You can't really compare it to Osama bin Laden. That guy is a criminal mastermind who got others to do his dirty work. The only comparison is the religious motivation.

Yes, I am ruling it out because it is an excuse-both for him and for the authorities who are afraid to address the issue of militant Islam. It is political correctness in action and it lulls the public to sleep.

But what if he really is mentally ill, Gary? You don't even seem to care if that's the truth or not.

If he is, it's not an excuse for anything, but it might very well be reality. Wouldn't it be good to know that so we can recognize the warning signs? I mean, why doesn't every Muslim do what he did? Why doesn't every Christian do what McVeigh did? Don't you think that there's something about the wiring in the brains of these guys that might make them more likely to do such a thing?

In the case of McVeigh, he stands pretty much alone in the pantheon of bombing terrorists these days who were not Muslim. Today, Muslims pretty much have the terrorist market cornered.

I cannot accept that they are mentally ill in the sense that McVeigh may or may not have been mentally ill. And I don't think McVeigh was legally insane.

One would normally think that no sane person could hijack an airplane and fly it into a building. What sane person would strap a bomb onto themselves and blow themselves up to kill as many others as they could? You can apply this question to as many of our known suicide terrorists as you want.

What motivated Hasan was the same thing that motivated Atta and all the others. They have been taught that it is their duty to kill non-Muslims. They have been taught that by doing so, they will gain entrance into heaven with 72 virgins.

Now you and I can say that is crazy, and certainly not all Muslims buy into that. The problem is, however, that when you read the Quran and the hadiths, plus the life of Mohammed, who was a warrior, then the radical statements spewing out of many mosques and madrassahs have a basis in belief. Those who we call radical Muslims can point out chapter and verse as to why they believe these things. It's all there-the killings, shariah, the hate toward Jews and Christians, etc.

Hasan was no more crazy than any of the others who have preceeded him. It is the MSM that tried to float this idea because they don't want to acknowledge the truth of the nature of the threat we are facing. The govt and the military don't want to talk about it because of the same reasons. It all comes down to political correctness.

The thing is, Gary, I'm not even saying that you're wrong. I just think that each case should be looked at individually. Perhaps there's a certain type of mindset that is naturally drawn to this type of fundamentalist fervor. Basically, I'm just saying that we shouldn't immediately rule out mental illness. (At least, not in the case of somebody who lives in this country. You're right - in The Middle East, this is the kind of stuff they're indoctrinated with, so mental illness isn't necessary.)

And yes, there are definitely some scary things in the Koran. But as somebody who has described himself as a Christian, you know as well as I do that there are things in The Bible that do not exactly go hand-in-hand with our modern values.

Right now, the Christians are doing a better job overall of ignoring those messed up scriptures. The Muslims are having a tougher time of it.

Maybe it would be a good idea to not look to the scribblings of ancient and medieval tribesman for our modern day values.

Correct, Lance, but remember Islam has never experienced an Enlightenment nor a Reformation.

That's part of the problem. Also, the Reformation did not repudiate the teachings of Christ. It was not a rebellion against the Bible. It was a rebellion against the corruption of the Catholic Church. Think about it. Could Islam go through a Reformation? How would it play out out? Do they reject the Prophet? Do they reject the words in the Quran and Hadiths that express hate and killing?

Considering that Jews and Christians no longer own slaves - despite the fact that their holy scriptures condone the practice, I'd say that it is indeed possible. (That's just one example, of course. I could find more if you want me to belabor the point.)

The thing is with Islam, from what I understand, is that it does have a long tradition of its followers not taking the Koran literally. Recently it has seen a scary, sweeping tide of literalism, and that's why we have what we have today.

Basically, Christianity emphasizes belief. Judaism emphasizes ritual and practices. Islam has a history of being more about ritual (five daily prayers, stuff like that) but the rise of fundamentalism stresses belief - and a very literal one at that.

Oh, and regarding the teachings of Christ - I have yet to meet a Christian who has given up all of his possessions and given them to the poor.

He told his followers to do that, you know. He also encouraged them to abandon their families. Nobody ever really likes to mention that stuff though. (The first part sounds a lot like socialism and wealth redistribution to me! Lousy commie, that Jesus!)

Lance, Jesus asked only certain people to give up their possessions and families. We are not required to do that as Christians. Followers of the Islamic religion are for the most part illiterate and can't read the Koran. Besides that the Koran has to be read in Arabic, which a lot of them don't know.When we were in Iran, the illiteracy rate was 70 percent, I don't know what it is now. To quote a good friend who shared the Iranian experience with us:"They just ain't ready".

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Roger Gardner of Radarsite (1936-2009)

About Me

Born 1945 in Los Angeles. Worked from 1998-2016 as adjunct teacher at University of California at Irvine Ext. teaching English as a second language.
Served three years in US Army Military Police at Erlangen, Germany 1966-68.
1970-1973- Criminal Investigator with US Customs
1973-1995 Criminal investigator with Drug Enforcement Administration. Stationed in Los Angeles, Bangkok, Milan, Italy, Pittsburgh and Office of Training, FBI Academy, Quantico, Va. until retirement.
Author of Erlangen-An American's History of a German Town-University Press of America 2005,
The Story of Papiamentu- A Study in Slavery and Language, University Press of America, 2002, and
The Languages of the Former Soviet Republics-Their History and Development, University Press of America, 2000.